Story: The Sword of Selection
The Sword of Selection is an excerpt from a letter sent by Tanwyn Angharad, a welsh girl who was at the time going through the training to become a fully fledged Knight of Illuminor. It describes her experience during the Trial of Affinity, when new recruits visit the vaults to see if they show any compatibility with the Legacy Weapons stored there. 20th of March, the Spring Equinox Dear Mother, and you brats who I know are reading this, First I'd like to apologize for my awful handwriting. I'm writing with my right hand currently because my left one is currently bandaged up like a club. I should probably get used to writing this way, as our script wasn't really meant to be written left handed... but I digress. It's... rather hard to comprehend what just happened. Today is known among the squires as "the day of disappointment," so I didn't expect much from it. Now my head is spinning, my ears are ringing, my dominant hand feels like it got shoved into a bed of coals, and I've got the worlds deadliest puppy refusing to be more than ten feet away from me. I'll have to start at the top, partly to make sense of everything and partly because I like suspense and I know you'll let my sisters read this when I send it to you. Might want to not do that this time, as I'm pretty sure what I'm writing shouldn't be on paper anyway. The elders have been running around like headless chickens since it happened. It would be kinda funny, if it didn't mean I should be having a funeral for my free time. Anyway, to get back on topic... Morning of Great Sleepiness When I woke up in the morning I very nearly forgot what day it was. Was halfway through brushing my teeth when I realized I should be putting on my dress uniform instead of my normal training tunic. Illuminors make a big deal about the lauded "Trial of Affinity" to the general populace. I guess its to show off how many moldy staves they have. But for squires it's different. There's a real strict hierarchy among the squires, and knights themselves really, that they don't like talking about. See, if your family has served the Illuminors for a few generations, you automatically get extra training from them, have a leg up on learning the magecraft, enjoy having more status than the first generation recruits, and most of all, have increased affinity for the Legacy Weapons, because you probably have a wielder in your family. For them (we call them Janissaries, and they hate it) it's practically a day of affirming instead of affinity, they go into the grand vaults, find a weapon that their mother or grandfather used, and come out again victorious, assured of their superiority. If it gets any worse they'll be able to compete with the Thornwicks for the prize of having the largest stick up their ass. (Told you not to let my sisters read this.) For new-bloods like me, and the majority of the recruits really, it's mostly a day where we stand around and are allowed to briefly touch dusty old medieval weapons before being shooed out so the Janissaries can have their moment of glory. You'd think they were drawing the sword from the stone for all the praise heaped upon them. Anyway, so I had to rush to get ready on time, because not showing up for one of the trials is grounds for immediate censure. Legacy Weapons are finicky, and they really want to get as many candidates in the vaults as possible so as to have the largest chance of getting as many weapons as possible into the field instead of staying in the vaults. Descendants are all very well and good, but they really don't compare to a truly ancient Legacy. A Descendant Durendal might be able to rend steel, but last I heard the real one had cut through another titanium sheath simply through it weight alone. The difference in power is that huge. Because of that, skipping this trial gets you held back a year and censured automatically, no matter what your reasoning was. They dragged a squire out of the sanitarium while he was still recovering from surgery last year just so he could attend. His IV pole triggered one of the suits of armor in the vault and it blew him and half the class across the room. Must have thought it was a spear or something. Great Vaults of Glorified Rat Traps When I got to where the squires were gathering in the athenaeum, it was already fixing up to be how I expected. The Janissaries were in their own group, boasting, showing off medals that I'm certain their parents gave them out of nepotism, and generally being huge pricks. One loudmouth claimed that he'd be the one to wield Gramr, which was stupid because that old thing stopped accepting wielders when we stopped hunting dragons, and it's been in the vault ever since because apparently letting a dragon see even one of its Descendants it constitutes a hate crime. Like walking around Israel in a Nazi uniform and waving a swastika I suppose. Can't imagine what showing the actual thing to a dragon would be like. Perhaps declaring loudly in the Bundestag that seeing as Hitler's ghost is still haunting his Führerbunker that means that he should still rule Germany, I don't know. Anyway, the rest of us kinda wandered around and tried to stave off boredom by reading the old tomes on swordswomanship that they've got on display in there. Found a few interesting techniques myself, but right as I was getting to the good part where they actually show you how to do them the Elders called for us to assemble. I wasn't reall-~~- Crap, the puppy set the table on fire. I'll continue this later. Back, minus one pitcher of water and plus one scorched dorm table. So we filed into the vault, and immediately were assailed by the smell of old leather, oil, metal, and what I was pretty sure was a dead rat that tried nibbling on a leather cuirass and got electrocuted for its trouble. After the Elders shooed us out of the area to fumigate, we went back in for the actual ceremony, which consists of the Janissaries waltzing over to Legacies they recognize, the rest of us being herded around the vault while being told repeatedly that if we damaged anything we'd be burned at the stake, and the occasional flare of magic as one Janissary or another exulted in their affirmation. The vaults aren't really organized by anything other than the date of last use, so the deeper one goes the mustier it gets and the less likely one is to find a Legacy willing to bond with them. But the Janissaries were being insufferable, the Elders were berating a new-blood who had tried claiming a Legacy a Janissary wanted, and I swear the elders have an aura of stuffiness, so I and about a quarter of the new-bloods wandered off into the deep vaults to explore and get away from it all. We probably shouldn't have been there, and wouldn't have been allowed back there due to the fragility and importance of the items (most major Descendant producing Legacies are stored elsewhere, but that doesn't stop the elders shrieking if you so much as touch an old ring), but the guy who was claiming earlier he'd draw Gramr tried his luck, and the bloodthirsty blade bit him. So he had to be taken to the sanitarium to get the necrosis curse removed, and in all the hubbub the elders weren't paying attention to the little people. Deep Vaults of Cobwebs +6 Once we got into the deep vaults we split up into our little cliques and struck up conversations, mostly about what we'd be rather doing, in which sleeping figured quite prominently. The Elders beleive in working squires to the bone the day before just about any Trial in the hope that tired squires won't have the energy to misbehave. It results in a lot of bad showings from new-bloods, as they don't get taught the rejuvenation ars magus until the third year when we study ars in detail, and all the Janissaries know it by heart by the time they become squires. More nepotism. That aside, I ended up wandering around the circa 1945 section alone because I made the mistake of pointing out that the reason my friends were falling asleep was that they stayed up late partying. You'd think prospective knights would be more dedicated to the truth. But eh, whatever. That section had never really been organized due to the chaos of the time, with so many Knights dying and Legacies being lost, misplaced, or destroyed, it was less a section and more of a pile of old stuff. I thought I'd dig around through there and see if I found anything interesting, like an authentic Nazi swastika rune. Such a useful enchantment matrix, never to be used again. We've got a few of them according to the stories, and some claim that the inverse swastika is still used as part of some of our older armor rune matrices, so I thought I'd try to hunt one down. Instead, all I found was a few bows, which I presume lost their wielders to MG-42s, a Svalinn Descendant that had been hit by a tank round, several damaged Durendal Descendants that had diverged too greatly from the Legacy to maintain their power, and this really old soot covered longsword, which looked like it would fall apart if I touched it. I'd like to keep the suspense up for my sister's sake, but I can't evade telling you this any longer. When I did try picking up the sword and putting it on the nearby shelf, it promptly glowed red hot and gave me a nasty burn on my left hand, which is why my handwriting sucks right now. After a moment it cooled off and actually became strangely comfortable to hold, but not before my skin had cracked and bled all over the accursed thing. I was pretty sure that it was actually cursed, seeing as most of our Legacies at least let you pick them up to move them and don't reject you unless you try drawing them. At least that explained why it hadn't been moved from its pile on the floor. I didn't really want to look like an idiot, especially since a Janissary had made the same mistake earlier, so I wrapped my hand in one of the old cloth wrappings strewn everywhere and tried to sneak back out to the main group. The YanTsundere Sword of Legendary Stalking I was almost back out of the deep vaults when I, and everyone else heard a loud clatter. Apparently, the cursed sword had been dragging itself on the ground after me like a demented magnet, leaving a scorch mark the entire time. The nearest elder promptly yelled at me for knocking a priceless artifact off the shelf and told me to pick it up and put it back. At that moment a pompous Janissary that I've been feuding with decided to take the opportunity to embarrass me, and snatched the sword from my hands talking about how I was a disgrace to the order for being so careless, and how I really should just quit before I became even more of a washout. Because I hated the prick I decided not to tell him about how the sword was cursed, hoping he'd burn his lily-white aristocratic leather gloves of snobbiness off. I was disappointed when the sword did not even so much as singe the things, but I chalked that up to whatever rune matrix of perfect fingernails the gloves were enchanted with. He flounced off like only a french prat can, making a great show of caring tenderly for the decrepit blade and holding it close to his face in a manner that he probably intended to be impressive but came off as disturbing. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to have my athame with me so I could set his shiny blond hair on fire. I'd turned away and was attempting to get out of the spotlight before someone noticed my hand when I heard a yell behind me and had to duck as a flaming something shot over my head, did a u-turn in mid-air, and fell to the ground in front of me. I was sorta distracted by nearly getting decapitated by an enthusiastic sword, but my attention was quickly drawn to the flailing and flaming twit behind me, whose hair gel had been set on fire by the sword during its flight back to me. One of the elders extinguished it with a cloth, as using any type of deliberate ars in the vaults is just asking for a legacy weapon to trigger and kill you. A lot of the New-bloods, myself included, couldn't help but laugh at the spectacle and that only made things worse. The Trial ended in chaos, with the elders forcing us out of the vault and carting the twit off to the sanitorium to get his hair regrown while I tried to make myself scarce, which wasn't aided by the cursed sword setting itself on fire each time I left it behind. I eventually gave up and just settled down to wait for my imminent haranguing in silence, trying to figure out why a sword that had charred my hand was now stalking me like those fat old guys you hear about in Japan. The Censuring to end all Censuring That haranguing wasn't long in coming, and I think my ears are still ringing from it. I got dragged by an Elder straight up to the Knight Commander, still holding a cursed longsword almost as tall as I was, with the explicit intent of excommunicating me for my horrific assault on the noble hair heir of a long time ally of the Knights Illuminor. I probably would have been too, except the same thing that felled the twit put paid to that idea too. Laevateinn (its name from what I've been told) refused to leave my presence and burned its way out of an enchanted steel strongbox when the increasingly irate elder had me put the blade into one so he could return it to the vault without getting burned. That put the Elders in a bit of a quandary. They couldn't separate me from the sword, and excommunicating me would result in losing a blade thought lost since its wielder died in the bombing of Dresden, which they were loath to do. So eventually I ended up getting shouted at for a few hours while the Knight Commander erected a silencing ward around himself and nodded along whenever the elder glanced in his direction for support. After elder had shouted himself hoarse beyond even whatever ars he was using to amplify his voice and heal his vocal cords from the damage incurred from sounding like an apoplectic bullfrog, the Knight Commander told me I was getting fast-tracked into the advanced Legacy Arms training program and would be on probation for a few months. I wasted no time hurrying to my quarters and sealing the door with a locking ars so I could write this letter without interruption. So there you have it. I'm now a Legacy Weapon wielder, much to my dismay. I think I really will have to have a funeral for my free time, with a little pyre and everything. The good news is that the stipend you'll be getting in return for my service should be increasing soon, so you'll be able to afford the rent on the house the next time the landlord jacks it up again. Get my sisters something nice too and tell them it's from me. They're annoying little scamps, but my quarters are darkened by their absence. Got to go, Laevateinn is smoldering again because I've left it alone for too long and I've scorched enough furniture today. With great tiredness and trepidation (and also love), Tanwyn Eirlys AngharadCategory:Stories Category:Knights Illuminor